


You Are All I Was Hoping For

by Java_Blythe_Peralta



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Love, TLKFFF2020, i love these babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25519603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Java_Blythe_Peralta/pseuds/Java_Blythe_Peralta
Summary: TLKFFF2020 prompt 75: Sihtric takes his wife for a moonlight stroll (except they aren't married yet).Sihtric can't understand why Ealhswith won't get out of his head, so he does something about it.
Relationships: Ealhswith/Sihtric (The Last Kingdom)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: The Last Kingdom Fanfic Fest





	You Are All I Was Hoping For

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soprano_buddy15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soprano_buddy15/gifts).



> I did it! I got a fic in for the TLKFFF!
> 
> This fic is partly inspired by the moonlight stroll prompt, and partly by my friend, soprano_buddy15, telling me to write a fic about why Sihtric brings his wife flowers. 
> 
> The title comes from the song "Evermore" by Hollow Coves.
> 
> This fic is for the amazing soprano_buddy15 because she is as in love with these babies as I am!
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Sihtric wishes it hadn’t started like it did. He wishes he had met her and known her before anything more happened. He wishes it hadn’t begun on a drunken night with Finan daring him on. Yet that was how it did begin. 

It had begun in the dark of the night with fumbling fingers and sloppy actions. Sihtric drunk on victory and ale and her. The first two had faded, had dissipated in the days following. Yet somehow, he couldn’t get her out of his head. It was like his mind was possessed.

He continued to go back to her, because he found it was torture whenever he could not be with her. He fought and he rode with Uhtred but a corner of his mind was always on her, even in the heat of battle. Complete focus was not something Sihtric had anymore and that worried him. He didn’t know why she was always there, just that he couldn’t make her leave. That was a weakness. 

He found that physically being with her wasn’t enough. He wanted more, he wanted all of her. On his next visit to Winchester he found her, and he asked her to go for a walk. He offered to pay her, but she just shook her head at the silver. She grabbed his hand and pulled him beyond the city. 

The sun was gone, twilight was fading and a full moon rose on the horizon. Ealhswith led him to a path that wound through the forest. He followed her, not knowing where they were going but finding he trusted her completely. That was another weakness. 

The moonlight lit up the path. Sihtric marvelled at the way it illuminated her hair, making it seem like it shone and glowed all on its own. Ealhswith continued to lead him until they reached a small clearing on the bank of a stream. Large rocks edged the stream and that was where Ealhswith sat. She looked at him and Sihtric lost his breath. 

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He had always thought so, but there in the woods there was a lightness about her that she lacked in Winchester. There was a freedom, as if a weight had been lifted from her conscience. She was ethereal there in the moonlight. He was so caught up in looking at her that he missed what she said to him. He shook himself and listened intently as she repeated the question. 

“Why?” She asked.

“Why what?” He said, the confusion was clear on his face.

“Why do you keep coming back? No man has ever sought me out as many times as you have.” 

“You are beautiful.” Sihtric answered.

“Oh.” Ealhswith looked down, she seemed disappointed by his answer. 

“And you are kind, and you understand me, and I feel at home where you are.” Sihtric continued, looking at her piercingly with those strange, wonderful eyes of his. 

She had noticed his eyes, how the colours differed, on one of the nights when he had stayed in her bed and they had talked about anything and everything until dawn broke. He had told her the story of his childhood, the cruelty he had experienced at the hands of Kjartan, his father. The kindness and love from his mother, her death and his life until he had found himself in Uhtred’s service. 

Ealhswith in her turn had told him of her childhood, how her parents were both killed in a Danish raid when she was a little child. How she had grown up on the streets until she was old enough to work in the alehouse. How she wished she could do more than she did, how it was the only way she could survive. 

Those were the same moments Sihtric thought of as he tried to explain why he kept coming back to her. 

“You were not frightened when I told you of my past.” He continued. “Many a person has shied away when I have told the things I did to survive. You understand me, you make it seem like it wasn’t my fault, that I wasn’t someone who deserved what Kjartan did to me.” He never could refer to the man as his father. 

Ealhswith looked down again, but this time it was in embarrassment, and happiness. A blush crept up her cheeks. 

“Ealhswith,” Sihtric said, waiting to continue speaking until she looked up. When she met his eyes, they had darkened in his earnestness. “I keep coming back because I cannot get you out of my mind. Constantly you are there, be it when I am fighting, or when I am walking, or when I am training. Even in my sleep you do not leave me, you haunt my dreams.” 

He paused, before saying: “I love you.”

That froze Ealhswith. Whatever answer she expected, it was not that. Love never entered her thoughts. She believed she was pretty, she thought he enjoyed how she listened to him. Maybe she was just a good woman to hump. She never thought or dreamed he loved her. 

“You can’t.” She whispered, tears running down her cheeks. 

“Why not?” He asked softly. 

“Because,” she tried to find the reason, “I am a whore,” Sihtric winced at that word. “I am not honourable, I am impure, and I have nothing. I am nothing.” 

“No!” Sihtric shouted, with such force that it shocked her. The shy, kind man she had grown to know was gone, and she realized she was looking at the warrior. The warrior who fought with such spirit for those he put his trust in. The warrior who would give his life for someone he loved. His face softened and he knelt in front of her before continuing his speech. 

“You are far more than nothing, Ealhswith. You are everything. Your life has not been easy, and it has not been kind to you. That does not make you nothing. It makes you a survivor. You survived the cruelty that others inflicted on to you, and so have I. We are both survivors. You are not nothing, never can be nothing to me.” 

Ealhswith was truly crying now, no one had ever spoken to her this way before. No one had ever tried to convince her that she mattered. 

Sihtric reached up and brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Believe it or not, Ealhswith, I love you. I wish to marry you.” 

Ealhswith didn’t think it was possible for her to become more shocked, but Sihtric surprised her again. She gaped at him. 

“You wish to do what?!” 

“I wish to marry you. I have spoken to Lord Uhtred, and he has agreed.” 

She stared at him in stunned amazement. An hour ago she would not have believed him, yet it seemed that everything had changed in that hour in the woods, under the moonlight. 

“Alright.” She said. 

“Alright what?” Sihtric asked, his voice deepening with emotion. “I need to hear you say it, Ealhswith.”

“Alright, I will marry you.” She said, and she couldn’t control the joy that came over her at that statement. She felt she could float away, or that her face would crack in two from smiling so hard. 

Sihtric surged towards her, wrapping his arms around her waist and bringing his mouth to hers. He kissed her forcefully, but she felt so much love and happiness in that kiss. She returned it with matching fervour. 

“I love you, Sihtric Kjartansson.” Ealhswith said when they parted for air. Her forehead rested against his. She looked down into his eyes, for he was still half kneeling on the ground. She found she never wanted to look away. She realized that he had been as much in her mind as she had been in his, she just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge or admit it. 

“And I love you.” Sihtric answered her. “Always.”

Eventually they walked back toward Winchester, hands clasped tight together. Just as they were about to leave the forest Ealhswith spotted a small clump of white flowers at the base of a tree and she pulled away from Sihtric to pick them. These flowers were the only beautiful things she had ever been able to possess. She buried her face in the small white blooms and breathed in. 

“I love these flowers.” She sighed. 

“More than you love me?” Sihtric teased. She slapped his arm. 

When they returned to her room in Winchester she put the flowers in a cup of water. Seeing her standing there with the flowers in her hands Sihtric was reminded of his mother. When he was young she would tell him stories, one of those came into his mind now. She said that a boy used to bring her flowers when she was a young girl in her village, before Kjartan had enslaved her. She had said that it was one of the few times she remembered feeling love. She had told Sihtric that it was the smallest acts that showed a person’s love. 

In that moment Sihtric made a vow to himself that he would do the smallest deeds to make sure that Ealhswith knew that he loved her. He started by bringing flowers to her on their wedding day. When she saw them she fell even more in love with this boy. Tears filled her eyes and Sihtric wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, pressing his lips to her forehead. “I love you.” 

Years pass, Sihtric leaves many times with Uhtred. He is nearly killed too many times to count. Still, he always returns, and every time he brings her flowers and kisses her forehead and tells her he loves her. 

That is the one thing neither of them ever doubts, their love for each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
